Getting through the filter: more on social commerce

Related to my last post on social commerce, the NY Times published a column last Sunday by Rob Walker, "Getting through the filter." Sometimes, it seems, we insist on buying things even when it is clear they don't work. I tip my hat to the marketers of the world who know how to work that trick. Also, for those unfamiliar with collaborative filtering, you may enjoy this Wikipedia primer as a complement to Rob Walker's article; his title is a clever double-reference to air filters (as a consumer product) and collaborative filtering (as a mechanism influencing our purchasing decisions).

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Social commerce, Identity 2.0, and Yahoo Shoposphere

Hard as I try to present myself as a Malcolm Gladwellian compu-sociologist, I am humbled each week by Google Analytics' unflinching report that, once again, my most popular topic is "Sears customer complaints":

The global popularity of my one unremarkable tale of refrigerator woe reminds me how small my "real audience" (of social capitalistas) is compared to the number of everyday online consumers.

These two worlds are about to combine in an exciting new way. Yahoo recently unveiled "Social commerce" (via the Shoposphere) -- conveniently omitting the credit due to the folks at Social Physics for coining this term. For more on the growing buzz around social commerce, see "The beginnings of social commerce" by Geniune VC and "2006 trends to watch: social commerce" by Micro Persuasion.

I think social commerce is going to go very far in ways both good and not so good. On the good side, part of the technology fueling social commerce is increasingly mature infrastructure to support online indentity. This is truly revolutionary Web 2.0 stuff IMHO. See Higgins and this extremely slick presentation by the CEO of sxip for interesting work in Identity 2.0.

On the less good side, I took a quick look at Shoposphere and found the whole concept of socializing via gadget recommendations rather depressing. Can't we bond over something more meaningful than iPod Nanos? See this NY Times critique of viral marketing for more on that lament.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License and is copyrighted (c) 2006 by Connective Associates except where otherwise noted.

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Social network analysis, glocalization and Web 2.0

Yesterday afternoon I joined a worldwide conference call about social networks and Web 2.0, sponsored by CPsquare. I didn't enter the call with a conscious agenda, but by the end I realized that I had championed a consistent message from beginning to end through the wide-ranging hour-plus conversation.

In a nutshell, my realization is that the Internet is empowering increasingly efficient exchange of trusted information, through extremely focused contexts that define specific kinds of trust. (Note that this relates closely to "glocalization," and I highly recommend this essay on the topic by Danah Boyd. See also this Web 2.0 primer by Bill Ives.)

Normally, we receive trusted information either from somone we have developed a personal relationship with, or from a "name we can trust" that has invested a huge amount of time and energy into its reputation. But in the "Web 2.0" world of Amazon and eBay, I buy products I know nothing about from anonymous merchants I will never meet. All I know is that people "like me" have recommended the item I am purchasing, and that other people "like me" have found the merchant reputable. Who are those other people "like me"? That is an increasingly specific calculation done behind the scenes by Amazon, eBay, and countless other web service providers.

At one point in the CPsquare conference call, someone lamented the issue of trust management in online social networks. Many members of LinkedIn will likely agree with that assessment as they delete spam from their requests for referrals. But when the context is specific (much more specific than on LinkedIn), trust management is significantly less of a concern. Shopping on eBay is a good example of a very narrow context (merchant reliability for widget X) that successfully engenders a specific kind of trust (buying widget X sight unseen).

Later in the CPsquare conference call, someone else noted that people can only handle so many interpersonal connections, so where are we going with all this social network technology? Again, most LinkedIn users I know would agree with that sentiment. But the eBay shoppers of the world share trusted information with each other without even knowing of each other's existence, much less having interpersonal connections.

I ended the call with a clearer notion than ever that Web 2.0 is helping us save our interpersonal energy for the big stuff (friends, family, business partners), by relieving us of the burden of establishing interpersonal trust for the small stuff (widget merchants).


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License and is copyrighted (c) 2006 by Connective Associates except where otherwise noted.

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Why math will rock your world (BusinessWeek)

Click on the image below to read the latest cover story from BusinessWeek: "Why math will rock your world."
When you are ready to do some world-rocking of your own, I recommend you start by reading about Jon Kleinberg, world's foremost expert on information networks. Useful background reading is also available on arXiv and CiteSeer.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License and is copyrighted (c) 2006 by Connective Associates except where otherwise noted.

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Writing in digital environments (WIDE)

Researchers at WIDE (writing in digital environments) at Michigan State University are exploring ways to make collaborative writing easier. Their research agenda focuses on three questions:

1. What are the processes for digital composing?
2. What are the best practices of digital composing?
3. How do we enable the capacity for communities and organizations to write in digital environments?

Their research projects include the intriguing "Re-imagining what workflow representations are and what they do for knowledge workers."

Thanks to my friend Michael Diramio (project manager for the Food System Economic Partnership) for bringing WIDE to my attention over the holidays.


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The future of organizational development, social networks, and Web 2.0

Happy New Year everybody! Connectedness, the blog, is getting off to slow start this year. But that's because everything else around here is jumping. Here are some future attractions that are coming soon--

1. Check out the online conference on Web 2.0 being hosted this month by CPsquare. Next week this conference's featured track will be social networks. Patti Anklam, Bill Ives, and yours truly will be kicking off the networking track with a global conference call Tuesday January 17, 3pm EST. (Actually, the three of us are all in the Boston area, but we expect/hope many others will join our phone conversation from all corners of the globe.)
2. Also next week, I am co-facilitating (with Curdina Hill of ClearWays to Freedom) a discussion on "Hot New Practice Areas in OD," hosted by the Massachusetts Bay OD Learning Group, Thursday January 19. If you can't join us in Boston but are curious to hear more, I encourage you to scan this PowerPoint file and bibliography on the "Future of OD" as presented last November at ODLG. The PowerPoint lists a handful of "urgent opportunities" in OD that I will discuss further in an upcoming post.
3. Curious to learn the basics of how "social networks" can help you develop your professional leadership and growth? My introductory "Power Networking" workshop may interest you. It will be hosted by ideasAloft on Wednesday evening February 1 in Newburyport, MA.
   

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Bondage and bonding online (Op-Ed by David Brooks in NY Times)

We run a family-friendly blog here at Connectedness, with the occasional wink. So my first reaction on sampling the world's most popular online social network, MySpace, was "how can I report on this?" (Well, actually that was my second reaction, but we'll leave my first reaction for another time, another blog.)

So here comes David Brooks to the rescue, following up last month's story on human capital with a thoughtful NY Times Op-Ed piece on MySpace ("Bondage and Bonding Online"). He concludes with a split decision:

1. Today's young people are happy, wholesome, and amazingly community-minded, and the online smut is just a way of demarcating an adult-free social space.
2. Today's prolonged adolescents are filled with earnest desires for meaningful contact, but live in a culture that has provided them with no vocabulary to create these sorts of bonds except through cleavage and vodka.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License and is copyrighted (c) 2006 by Connective Associates except where otherwise noted.

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